We are an aerospace engineering service bureau. Accuracy is a major concern to our customers. Anything we deliver has to hold a tolerance of ±.005” or better anywhere across a ~ 42x180”, J-size print. We commonly produce our CAD files holding that tolerance, but we must often send our files for verification to customers and outside print shops. PDF would simplify everything so we do not have to get into the complexity of CAD files.
So the question becomes if we import a very, very accurate let us say AutoCAD (or Catia) file well within that tolerance - in reality will that PDF file be that accurate? Assuming that a plotter can even plot to that tolerance to begin with, using Acrobat if that user plots that file well it be within this ±.005” tolerance requirement? Several engineering folks say –no- Adobe Acrobat cannot hold that tolerance requirement. It will not be as accurate as the original CAD file.
So who is right? Will Adobe Acrobat truly produce a one-to-one file good to three if not four decimal places? Dealing in the aerospace industry ‘about or this is close’ is not even vocabulary they understand. So when we import that vector CAD file that is dead-on accurate good to 2 or 3000s of an inch, can a user truly get a one-to-one translation and a true one-to-one print good to that 2 or 3000s of an inch? Can we trust that PDF file to be dead-on what we started with?